The Codex is an illustrated encyclopedia of a world that doesn’t exist, in a language that likewise doesn’t exist. Even though it doesn’t use characters like any other language, as far as anyone can figure, Codex Script is consistent. There’s even a Rosetta Stone on one of the pages. Unfortunately, it just translates to another script, which is, of course, just as inscrutable. One neat thing — all the pages are numbered… in Codex Script. And, the society depicted uses a different number base.
The book is separated into sections, including (roughly) Science, Technology, Plants, Animals, and Humans. One of the neat things is, unlike a lot of things like this, the world isn’t nightmarish at all — it’s actually pretty nice. There’s a Fish-Tap! You can have a faucet that gives you fish! It’s definitely a bizarre world, but it’s not a dystopia or anything. Nor is it a utopia — it’s just pretty much a normal-type world, only with Fish Taps and people with Fountain-Pen fingers, and creatures with one base and 4 or 5 human torsos/head/arms going around and doing stuff. It’s pretty damn keen.
The language of the book is really intriguing too; aside from the different number-base, it’s sort of up in the air whether or not Codex Script is an actual, devised language or not. Evidence seems to point to “not”, however — as my friend Ben points out, there’s a lot of duplicated characters in the Codex’s words, which typically isn’t the norm. (His example: It’d be like, in English, if “bookkeeper” were a common word.) Still, though — it could be possible, since we don’t know how the grammar of the language would work (and perhaps double/tripled symbols have different pronunciations. It looks like the symbols are either an alphabet or syllabary, probably the latter. As Ben points out, there are tons of characters, generally not a feature of alphabets, but there’s words with over a dozen characters, generally not a feeature of pictographic systems.
There is one down-side of the Codex: It’s incredibly expensive. It’s actually in print, but only in a French edition (which doesn’t actually mean anything, except that the cover is in French, and there’s a French-language introduction), and they’re around 220 Euro, plus shipping. (For me, shipping was 20 Euro to the US – the grand total for me was 237.24 Euro, for the record. That’s a bit pricey for shipping, but it is a very large and heavy book.)
I’ve had this book for about a year or two now, and I love it. It’s great to show to people, just because it’s such an odd book, but incredibly beautiful as well. The publisher did a very nice job as well – heavy paper, a special box cover, beautiful printing. It may be very expensive, but you really do get your money’s worth. (And if you’re not willing to spend $300 on a book, sometimes you can get it through Inter-Library Loan, if you’ve got access to that type of thing.) It truly is a magnificent piece. Also, there was a short video on Luigi Serafini’s (now defunct) site, which seems to be a little bit of computer animation based on the Codex; I’m not sure what that means, but I’ve often thought that there actually could be a really cool (and incredibly unprofitable…) film that could be made from it, basically like a travelogue in Codex Speech. I’d love to do that. But something tells me it’d be a hard sell… (“Yes, I’d like to do a film that’s not in English or any language, really, not subtitled, a fake travelogue-style documentary that’d require loads and loads of special effects to do right. Hello?”)